Have you ever wanted something? I mean, really wanted it? Wanted it so badly that you can actually believe it into happening?We’re sitting in Mike’s kitchen, it’s half past midnight and we’ve been playing Texas hold ‘em since eight. The game’s going well for Scottish Paul, fair for Geordie Paul and Mike, and very badly for me and Ben.
Ben deserves to do badly; his recklessness beggars belief. He doesn’t think and he doesn’t learn. He’ll go all in with a pair of threes then get pissed off when he loses. Scottish Paul loves it; he comes to these evenings with one aim in mind, and that’s to bleed Ben dry. He sees it as a point of national pride to inflict heavy losses on the English and Ben in particular, and his regular taunts ensure that no-one forgets his Scottish superiority. He plays a long game, siphoning off Ben’s money drip by drip. By the end of the evening, Scottish Paul will go home at least a couple of thousand up, and Ben will be broke. These are the invariants of our games.
Geordie Paul’s an accountant, and he treats the whole thing as if it’s some kind of corporate fiscal exercise. He’s too precise and conservative to end the evening significantly up, but he’s not really interested in fleecing us all. He just wants to be able to go home and announce to his wife that he saw healthy growth at one percentage point above the base rate. I often expect him to react to a bad hand by scratching his baldy-pink head and suggesting over the rim of his readers that we pause to audit the pack.
Mike’s a solicitor, another conservative player whose years of court room theatrics have given him an inscrutable poker face. He’ll sit all evening going along with the ebb and flow of the pack, before springing an unexpected attack, torpedoing us all with a full house and allowing himself a wry smile as he mops up the chips from the table.
Unlike Ben, I’m not reckless. I haven’t done this badly in a long time. I’m playing pretty tight, but the cards have been against me in every hand. Hand after hand of nothing is bad enough, but at least with manifestly bad hands you fold early and cut your losses. Tonight has been different though – I’ve had good hands, but every round without fail someone else has had better. If I get a straight, someone else gets a flush. If I get a flush, someone else gets a full house. And if I’ve got nothing, it’s won on a pair. It’s hideous – luck this bad comes once a lifetime, and for the first time in a long time I’m down. Not just slightly down either; I’m out of pocket by almost three grand.
In movies poker is played in basement rooms lit by a single, shaded bulb over a green baize card table, or in the boxing ring of an east-end gym after hours, but in real life I’m losing my thousands sitting at the table where seven hours from now Mike’s kids will be eating their Shreddies as his wife stares blankly at the Mail on Sunday and wishes she was still in bed. The game pauses after every four or five hands so that Scottish Paul can go outside for a cigarette, because Mike’s wife won’t let anyone smoke in the kitchen. It’s not exactly Ocean’s Eleven.
There’s only one good thing about a losing streak as profound as the one I’m suffering tonight. At some point it ends. It ends, and when it does, it ends in style. The law of averages says I’m due a good hand by now. Not just a good hand, an awesome hand. And this is the last hand of the evening, so it’s now or never.
Mike has the button; the blind bets go down and he deals the pocket cards. I turn mine over, and I’m staring at a dream come true: jack of diamonds, king of diamonds. It’s a great start, rich with potential. Two face cards is good, two cards of the same suit is the seed of a flush, so two face cards of the same suit… it doesn’t get much better. And at that moment I know my luck has changed. You can feel it in your bones, there’s a buzz that’s unmistakable. This is going to be my hand.
I’ve got about three hundred pounds worth of chips left from my last buy, so the best I can do here is win three hundred off everyone at the table – one thousand two hundred in total. Not enough to cover my losses, but enough to allow me to leave feeling like it hasn’t been a total disaster.
A round of betting and the ante’s at thirty pounds. I raise to fifty. There’s always the temptation with a good hand to raise aggressively, but all it does is scare people off. You have to play a waiting game, raising little by little, reeling the others in like fish.
Geordie Paul and Mike both play tight. If I raise more than twenty or thirty they’ll both fold. Ben will see anything I put on the table and probably raise it himself, but winning money off Ben is a hollow, unsatisfying experience. Scottish Paul will stay in only if he thinks he can outlast everyone else to reap the rewards of Ben’s recklessness. As soon as he senses that anyone else has a better hand than him, he folds. He’s sly as a fox, and he rarely loses big-time to anyone, so he’s the one you really want to see bleed. The sight of him pushing his chips over the table to you, trying bitterly to pretend it’s only a game… God, it’s wonderful.
So, I stick to the twenty pound raise, and they all stay in. They’ve been taking the piss all night, they’ve never seen me lose this badly – hell, they rarely see me lose at all and this is a bloody massacre. They think I’m raising out of sheer last-hand desperation.
The betting gets back to Mike without another raise, and the flop goes down. First card, the seven of spades. Second card, the ace of diamonds. Third card, the ten of diamonds.
The ace of diamonds. The ten of diamonds.
Fuck me.
I’ve got the king and the jack right here in my hand. I’m one card away from a royal flush. It doesn’t get any better. I knew my luck was changing, I could feel it, and the flop confirms it. I try not to give anything away.
Mike whistles slowly. “Lucky for some.” I can tell he doesn’t mean himself.
It’s me to start. The ante’s at fifty. I’ve got two hundred and fifty left to play with. I need to get the ante up to three hundred, because I know with every fibre of my being that one of the next two community cards will be the queen of diamonds. Nothing has ever felt so certain in my life.
“I’ll raise fifty,” I say, turning to Scottish Paul, who sniggers.
“I won’t argue if you’re giving it away, mate,” he says, and sees my fifty.
Geordie Paul examines his pocket cards, then looks at the flop, then back to his pocket cards again, with typical actuarial precision. I know he’s sitting there figuring out the statistical significance of his current hand.
“O... K…,” he says deliberately, and he sees the fifty as well.
Ben next. Experience dictates that he’s got nothing, but he sees fifty and raises fifty without so much as a blink. “Come on!” he shouts, with lunatic bravado. Now Mike. He looks at Ben and you can see he hasn’t got anything worth betting another hundred on. “Nothing for me in this playground,” he says, and he folds. I feel a pang of anger at Ben; he’s going to balls this hand up with his irrational gambling and my full house will be wasted.
Now it’s back to me; I see the fifty, and to my surprise so do both the Pauls, so now the turn goes down. It’s the ace of spades.
For a moment there is silence. There’s a pair of aces on the table. There is the potential for some seriously good hands now. Three aces and a full house with aces are both easily possible. There are four players left, each with a hundred and fifty quid on the table. You can feel the temperature rise a notch. Everyone’s woken up a bit.
But nothing beats a royal flush.
Me to start again. I can tell that no-one’s going to fold in this round. I don’t know how, I just can. I’ve got a hundred and fifty pounds of chips left, so I start with a hundred. Scottish Paul sees my hundred, then Geordie Paul sees my hundred and raises a hundred. Just like that. He must have a full house at least, I can’t remember the last time he raised; Geordie Paul’s a textbook calling station. Ben next and he doesn’t even stop to think. He’s probably forgotten what his pocket cards are but he doesn’t care, and with a clatter of chips he sees the two hundred and raises another hundred.
“Ben, you’re a fucking nut,” says Mike, laughing. “So Simon, you going to see this crackpot?”
I’ve been watching very carefully this hand, probably as carefully as I’ve watched a game of poker in my entire life. Geordie Paul’s got something, no doubt about it. It can’t be a royal flush, because I’ve got the jack and king of diamonds, so my guess is it’s a full house; usually more than enough to secure a win. Ben’s got nothing, as usual. That just leaves Scottish Paul and me. And it doesn’t matter what Scottish Paul has, because a royal flush beats everything. I can’t explain how I know that my royal flush is coming, I just know. You play this game long enough and you develop a sixth sense, you just get a feel for how the cards are circulating, a deep understanding of the rhythm of the pack. So, Ben’s got four hundred and fifty pounds on the table in total. I’ll be all in for three hundred, but I can tell by the look on Geordie Paul’s face that he’s going to stay in, and I reckon Scottish Paul will too. It’s the last hand of the night, and everyone wants to taste that final thrill of victory. The community cards are so good that any of them might believe they’re in with a chance.
I badly want to be in on this last hand for as much as I can, but with fifty pounds left and a hundred and fifty to make up I’m playing with one hand tied behind my back. If I go all in the rest will continue making side bets, bets that I can’t touch even if I win the hand. But these guys have got that gleam in their eyes and I know the betting on this round is going to go high. And when the queen of diamonds goes down I’ll be sitting here with an red-hot hand and nothing to put on it.
My wallet’s empty, not that I could buy in mid-hand even if it wasn’t, but I have never been so desperate to raise and my mind starts racing trying to figure out how I could do it. Then I remember the car.
Last weekend we bought Katie her first car – an old 205 that we picked up for five hundred pounds. It’s a rust bucket but she loves it. I came out in it tonight so that I could fill it up for her and put it through the car wash on the way, and it’s parked on the driveway outside. Five hundred pounds… I could raise to eight hundred with that. Christ, at the very least I’ll take Ben’s money, and quite possibly one of the Pauls’ too. We don’t normally do this – bet with things – but I’m desperate enough to try. I slip my keyring out of my pocket and wind the key off under the table. And then, with a flourish:
“I’ll see your two hundred and raise you the change from a Peugeot,” and I place the key on top of my pile of chips.
“You what?” says Geordie Paul.
“Peugeot 205 – five hundred quid. It’s on the driveway, yours to drive away if anyone’s brave enough.”
There’s a silence, and then Scottish Paul laughs. “You’ve got what he’s got,” he says, pointing at Ben with his thumb. “Bloody pokeritis, you stupid English bastard. So what is it now, three hundred to stay in?”
“Aye,” says Geordie Paul, who’s already done the maths on this unconventional bet.
“OK,” says Scottish Paul, and he partitions off three hundred pounds worth of chips which he slides forwards onto his coaster.
Geordie Paul examines his pocket cards again, then examines the cards on the table. He knows he’s got a good hand, but the idea of seeing three hundred is anathema to him. He’s in a complete quandary, and for a moment he just sits there stalling, not knowing what to do.
“Come on,” says Scottish Paul. “Get a move on ye Geordie poof.”
“Who you calling a poof, you jock bastard?” says Geordie Paul, and with that he sees the three hundred.
Only Ben to go now, and he was counting out his three hundred before Scottish Paul had declared he was staying in. They land on the table in front of him with a clatter.
Now it’s time for the river card – the decider.
So, have you ever wanted something as badly as I want this queen of diamonds? You start to wonder; I want this so badly, can I actually trust my eyes to tell me the truth when the card goes down? How long will it take? Will I just be frozen there, unable to make sense of the number of pips on the card, their colour and shape? My breath becomes shallow, my hands feel clammy, the excitement is like nothing else on earth. In five seconds the card that I know is coming will be down. Four of us are in for eight hundred, Mike is in for fifty. I’ve got fifty in chips left, so I can get eight hundred and fifty off Ben and the two Pauls, plus my own eight hundred and fifty and Mike’s fifty, making three thousand four hundred and fifty in total. After a disastrous evening I’ll go home nearly five hundred up. Not the best win in the world, but it’ll be the looks on their faces that will be my real reward. I can’t wait.
Mike turns over the river and it feels like time stands still. I take in the detail of the card in discrete snapshots.
It is a face card.
There is a Q.
It is red.
It is diamonds.
The queen of diamonds.
The queen of diamonds!I rock back in my chair, balancing on the back legs and my hands are half way to my mouth before I stop myself because there’s still a round of betting to go and a couple of hundred still at stake, and if I give the game away now I’ll never forgive myself.
“Queen of hearts,” says Mike.
Of course, he’s joking. It’s impossible to believe that the sheer scale of my luck can be known only to me, so naturally Mike knows what I’ve got and he’s pulling my leg. Then I look at the table, and my heart misses a beat because the card has changed, it has morphed in front of my very eyes from diamonds into hearts. It wasn’t that I had been mistaken - I had seen diamonds. They were there. But now, they are hearts.
I feel a wave of nausea, my legs feel weak. How could this happen? This defies all the laws of logic, of averages, of poker for god’s sake. My best hand now is a pair of aces; the same pair of aces that everyone else has. If that’s the best that anyone has I could still win; my king of diamonds is likely to be the highest card on the table after the pair. But there’s no way Geordie Paul would have gambled this much on a community pair, nor Scottish Paul.
Oh Jesus Christ.
The betting starts with Scottish Paul, who checks. Geordie Paul checks. Ben checks. No-one’s got it in them to raise any further; my stunt in the last round has exhausted even Ben’s wild enthusiasm. So I check as well, and I can tell that they all know I’m screwed. If you raise like that on the turn then check on the river, you’re in deep trouble.
Ben flips his pocket cards over. The five of spades and the eight of clubs; worthless. “Pair of aces,” he says with dumb optimism, indicating the community cards.
Scottish Paul reveals his hand; the ace of clubs and the nine of clubs. “Three aces,” he grins.
Geordie Paul’s grinning too. He has the ace of hearts and the ten of spades. “Full house, like,” he says, sheepishly. If I wasn’t feeling so sick the look on Scottish Paul’s face would crack me up.
I turn my cards, but I don’t say a word. They all look, and then Geordie Paul reaches over and takes the key.
“Do you need a lift?” he asks.
